Paul di Resta has revealed that Force India is targeting fifth place in the constructors' championship in 2013.

The team was aiming to build on its encouraging sixth place in 2011 last season, but a competitive year saw it finish seventh despite scoring 40 more points than the year before. With the previous season in mind, di Resta admitted that while the team has set a target of fifth, he'd be content with another improvement on this season.

"We're hoping to finish fifth overall in the constructors' championship next season," di Resta told the Scotsman newspaper. "Personally, my first objective is to at least get back to sixth. Anything more than that would be a bonus."

Di Resta is more confident having solved the chassis problem that plagued the end of his 2012 season, but he admits he was frustrated at how long it took the team to come up with a solution.

"Obviously I won't go into specific details, but the car slowly but surely got worse as the season progressed. And we didn't pick the problem up quick enough. You tend to think these problems will iron themselves out over time, but instead it continued getting worse. It cost us time in Suzuka and in India. We changed the monocoque for Abu Dhabi, but in the end we had to replace the whole chassis, and that cured the problem. Unfortunately, that came right at the end of the season."